Jennifer's Stockings

[size=167]Jennifer’s Stockings[/size]

[size=142]I’m afraid I live in a keepsake-free world. My parents and grandparents have not seen fit to pass anything down save varying degrees of love and disappointment, and a rickety compliment of genes. A large square jaw for example, has been handed down the male side of my family like a slab of beef for three generations. I keep it fenced off behind a beard, where it cannot harm people.

Jennifer was a woman I met in the year before I left the country. She was tall, almost matching me for height in her heels. She had a strange way of walking - a defensive strut that reversed the usual tits-out/tummy-in/ass-out graceful, elongated ‘S’ of walking womanhood - rather Jennifer would fold her shoulders around the front of her rib-cage - hiding her breasts, and then lean way back, cantilevering her pelvis forward and scrunching her butt away into nothing. Her chin she would bury into the hollow of her throat; her eyes tucked away behind double fortress walls of fringe and brow. When she walked, if you were taking snapshot from a distance, you’d be reminded of a heron poised to strike.

I met her through a dating agency, when times were lean and I was meaner; a voicemail service for the chronically shy. You wouldn’t believe some of the replies I would get to my insufferably chirpy extrapolations around the theme of: “Hi, I’m J., I’m a twenty-five year old guy, so-so tall with long dark hair and a winning etc., with a degree in advanced blah, hoping to meet an outgoing woman for x, y and z.” Some of the women’s voices would shake so much the phone would tremble as I listened to them stutter through soap-opera couplets and Cosmopolitan manifestos of self. Jennifer in comparison, was cool, collected, and creditably calm.

We met in a suitably chique cinema bar, where the drinks aspired to be expensive, but never quite got there, and the films were always, always in black and white. And French. Or Scandanavian. Or Russian. Or all three. It did its job, lending us coolness by proxy. Hunched up and raincoated, crouched over our drinks, we attempted to smolder.

She: “Oh, I’ve never been here before.” [Bullshit].
He: “Me neither, I’ve always wondered what it was like inside.” [Bullshit].

He: “Did you like the film…?” [You chose it, you’d better].
She: “Yeah… It was very moving… Imagery compelling.” [it was so long my bum hurts from sitting].

She: “So, you’re an artist…?” [I think you’re a sponger].
He: “That’s right.” [I am a sponger].

But still, despite the appalling dialogue and a lack of discernable plot, there was enough chemistry between the actors for the studio to green-light a sequel. We agreed to see eachother again.

I don’t know about you, but I like scummy pubs: Raucous, smoky, labyrinthine and snug - any romance to be had must be carved out of the air with a trowel. You must sit close, you must lean in closer still - pouring breathey-drunk words half-heard into eachother’s ears - enclosed, enfolded in a little coccoon of hormonal fug. As the bell for drinking-up ding-dongs, we kiss triumphantly, our faces flushed from the success of winnowing out a little love against such odds, in such an unlikely place.

As we stagger out into the night, neither of us I suspect, remember anything much of what was said, though in contrast we remember sparklingly well the slick feel of lip on lip and the sherry-sweet mingling of our cocktailed spit. We hold eachother’s bodies tight as we weave through the throngs on alcohol-autopilot to my place, always my place.

Thank God for Mincabs.

Home now, giggly fumbles on the stairs. The clinking of glassware; the gurgles of emptied liquor-bottles - the scents of sticky Banana liquer, and some weird minty shit that got found under the table after a party and stuck in a drawer. Anything to repair the alcoholic shield-wall of anti-reality we’ve so painstakingly constructed. Candles, of course. And music. Slow dance groping. And bed. And skin, and sweat, and legs and arms and in the way and there we go and is that nice and owch that hurts and whoops it fell out and is that okay and hang on a minute and not like that and oh well okay and is that good oh god it is oh god it is and ohhhhhhhhhh.

You get our drift. You’ve probably been there. All porn films look the same after a while.

The biggest surprise for us both was in the morning. We actually didn’t feel too bad. We didn’t hate eachother. A bit blurry around the edges perhaps, a little tired - but we could speak, and our laughs still worked, and when we looked inside for where our regret would usually be, our chagrin, our shame - we came up empty. Worth a communal smile. I got Alka-Seltzer, hot buttered toast and tea, and she remained blissfully naked, save for her stockings, rolled-up and rucked-up down to her knees.

And when Jennifer left, she gave her stockings to me; a tip perhaps, for services rendered.[/size]

Comparable to your Christmas story Tab.

Thanks Doug - this was a piece from a series I wrote for a competition that ended a few weeks ago. (It’s also a true story !!!)

Gee, I’ll bet your wife was really impressed with this true story. :sunglasses: :laughing:

Lucky she doesn’t read in english as well as she speaks. :wink:

Anyways - a guy’s allowed a past, isn’t he…?

Are men allowed a past? For some reason, I never brought that subject up with my wife. :blush: But go ahead and ask yours, I’m sure we’d love to hear the results. :laughing:

Well crafted!

Some lines stood out to me that would have been perfectly housed in a poem.

Strong piece of confessional prose!

Cheers Colin, what you up to these days…?

Hello Tab.

I’m doing well, juggling many different things in my life.

Working on a book of poetry - being made by a man named John Couzin, who is a small time Historian of Glasgow Anarchists; he is producing and printing the book.

Working hard as hell as a postman with Royal Mail: Organised Chaos! Royal Mail in most definitely in its death throes, it really it full of Cowboys Slackers and Idiots, and the occasional backbreaking hard worker (i.e. Me and a few others).

And finally, started me TESOL course, at College nighttime, so within a year, I will have the qualitifcation, ave some training, and be heading further afield in Europe to teach English and, personally, be taught much more about life: can’t wait for all this to come to fruition!

See you about - perhaps on MSN?

Excellent, I’m really glad you’re doing the TESOL course, jobbing around the world off the back of your English is a great way to experience a culture and life in general rather than just see the bits in the backpacker’s handbook. And screw people of different nationalities of course. Good fucking man.